The present invention generally relates to software and firmware for controlling the scan function of a scan peripheral, and more particularly to software and firmware for repeating a scan operation of a peripheral connected to a network using previously used scan parameters.
Scan peripherals are becoming a larger segment of the peripheral industry. Users find such peripherals useful as a means of input for text, graphics and images. Some peripherals combine scanning with other functions. These multifunction peripherals are popular, in part, because of their ability to combine multiple useful functions into a single device. Increasingly, the scan and/or multifunction peripherals are implemented in a network so that their services are accessible to a more than one client. When connected to the network, the peripherals are operationally connected to the clients via a dedicated peripheral server, which includes software and firmware for allowing the clients to interact with the peripherals using a web browser. Such software and firmware are disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/163,791 filed Sep. 30, 1998 by Kumpf et al., now U.S. Pat. No. 6,289,371, which application is incorporated by reference herein.
Generally, the invention disclosed in the Kumpf et al. application provides an interactive networked client-server scan method launched and actively managed through a web browser interface on a client. A server responds to a universal resource locator (URL) address identifying the server with a general purpose format software program that creates an interface in the client web browser and enables the client to interact with the server in initiating, altering and monitoring scan jobs and related data.
One shortcoming of the known scan peripherals, whether a stand alone type scan peripheral or a multifunction peripheral, is that they do not have the ability to repeat a previously performed scan operation. In other words, the scan parameters, i.e., paper size, resolution, image type and image format, for example, in these peripherals for performing a scan operation are set to the manufacturer""s default settings. As such, the scan parameters must be changed by the user (through the client) for every scan job when the desired scan parameters differ from the default scan parameters, which is inconvenient to the user.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method which enables a peripheral connected to a network to automatically repeat the previously performed scan operation without requiring the user to reset the scan parameters to those used in the previous scan operation.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a method in which the scan parameters of a scan operation are automatically stored and used as the parameters for the next scan operation.
Another object of the present invention is to provide such an improved method which determines whether a peripheral newly connected to a network peripheral server is the same type as the peripheral which performed the previous scan operation.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide such an improved method in which the scan parameters used in the previous scan operation are retained if the newly connected peripheral is determined to be of the same type as the previously connected peripheral, and are reset to the default scan parameters of the new peripheral if the newly connected peripheral is of a different type than the previously used peripheral.
Other objects, features and advantages will become apparent upon reading the following detailed description, in conjunction with the attached drawings.